Doing harder job with the weaker hand

[Anglerfish]

I'm just curious. Why do we use our main hand for picking and the secondary one for fretting? Picking, plucking and even slapping seem to be relatively simple kinds of motion in comparison to fretting that is way more complicated and requires much more stretch, strength, attention and sometimes even visual control. But all the right-handed players still pick with their main (right) hand and fret with secondary (left) one. Most of left-handed players also feel more comfortable when picking with their main (left) hand and look for lefty instruments.

The question is: why does it work this way? Why do we feel more comfortable doing harder job with the weaker hand? What are your ideas about it?

 

[Later_Peter]

let me know when you know...'cause, I'd like to know.

 

[old spice]

I think the time (and rhythm) is more important than the pitch, and more difficult, too, and that's in the plucking hand.

 

[buldog5151bass]

Tradition, and nothing more. I am a lefty who decided to learn righty many years ago for three reasons:

1. easier to find instruments.
2. easier to trade with others in a band
3. it made sense per OP

Glad I made that decision.

 

[Herbal]

The plucking hand does more work than the fretting hand in one sense, I couldn't rely on my right hand to do the picking its just not good enough/untrained. (I'm lefty)

 

[Joe Nerve]

Allz I can say is ---

I've quite often wondered the same thing.

 

[JRA]

Tradition, and nothing more.

i think the "tradition" has more to do with how our brains are wired for 'handedness'. you have 'overcome' the wiring. i've known players (lefties) who learned to play a right handed instrument by turning it upside down so that their hand dominance was still 'in play'.

I think the time (and rhythm) is more important than the pitch, and more difficult, too, and that's in the plucking hand.

IMO: they're both important (fretless here!), but: the timing/rhythm thing ("plucking," per your post) requires more strength/agility which is usually found in our 'dominant' hand. a lot of playing bass is a matter of 'laying' a finger of your non dominant hand on the fb and then 'going to town' with the dominant hand/fingers. there are lots of exceptions, but for a right handed player: our left hands just don't have to work as 'vigorously' as our right hand...most of the time. our left hand is doing 'the art' while our right hand does the heavy lifting. and vice versa for a lefty!

 

[JGbassman]

Well I'm left handed and play right-handed bass. As a left hander, we are generally close to ambidextrous due to the world leaning so heavily to the right handed world. I was trained on classical trumpet, so my right hand fingers were already pretty nimble. Being left handed, it just seemed natural to play with my left hand on the fret board.

So I see a "right handed" bass as actually a left handed one. It just seemed natural for me to play what is considered a right handed bass..

 

[Clef_de_fa]

You don't have to concentrate on your picking hand when it is your dominant hand so your brain is concentrated on the pitch.

Simple as that.

I have met some player who are lefthanded but play right handed and to them, the picking need more attention while their dominant hand just moves on the neck... I think it makes stuff harder for no reason.

 

[BassFishingInAmerica]

Has nothing to do with strength. Both hands are strong enough for the task (after all, you're not lifting weights). It is related to which hand needs to be more coordinated, which is more important at keeping rhythm.

 

[Bioflava]

This is a really interesting thread to me as I'm a lefty in all things -- but I play right-handed bass and guitar. I would love to learn more about why the tradition developed.

For my part, I started playing as a righty because I picked up other people's axes in college. There were advantages to learning this way -- fretting was easier -- but I have had to work hard to train my right hand to drive the instrument.

When I first started, I tended to control the rhythm with left-hand muting and my grove feel was not strong. After a lot of work with a metromome, I feel like a play with better coordination between my hands and surer sense of rhythm -- but every once-in-awhile, I do think about what it would feel like to start again with the opposite hand.

 

[AztecViking]

My brother is full blown ambidextrous but is usually considered a lefty since he writes that way. He learned to play my righty basses rather quickly since he was schooled in both piano and trombone. If I had left handed basses around I'm guessing he could have learned to play those just as easily.

His both handedness really payed off when he was a baseball player. He actually preferred to pitch right but then batted left. He's a lefty golfer too.

 

[BBQisgood]

I always wondered this. I think that maybe, way back in time when stringed instruments were extremely basic, all the action was in the plucking hand.

That's maybe why convention is to pluck (or bow) a stringed instrument with the dominant hand. It comes from before there were even fingerboards or fretboards.

Whatever rudimentary instruments were played around the time somebody developed the fretboard were likely like simple harps that were held in one hand and plucked/strummed. The configuration stuck.

 

[7dollarbologna]

The idea is the dominant hand should be the rhythm hand -

 

[SanDiegoHarry]

I'm just curious. Why do we use our main hand for picking and the secondary one for fretting? Picking, plucking and even slapping seem to be relatively simple kinds of motion in comparison to fretting that is way more complicated and requires much more stretch, strength, attention and sometimes even visual control. But all the right-handed players still pick with their main (right) hand and fret with secondary (left) one. Most of left-handed players also feel more comfortable when picking with their main (left) hand and look for lefty instruments.

The question is: why does it work this way? Why do we feel more comfortable doing harder job with the weaker hand? What are your ideas about it?

Excellent question. I attempted to explore this when I was a very new player. Using your logic, I restrung my one bass backward and tried to play left handed, since I'm right handed. It never work. Felt all WRONG.

But here's the thing - by fretting with your non-dominant hand, I believe you make yourself more ambidextrous. I know that's what happened with me.

 

[SanDiegoHarry]

The idea is the dominant hand should be the rhythm hand -

And yet I usually use my non-dominant hand for... Rhythm. Ahem.

 

[7dollarbologna]

And yet I usually use my non-dominant hand for... Rhythm. Ahem.

Me too

 

[PsyDocHill]

I'm another left-hand dominant player who plays right handed. The dominance of my fretting hand has been a major factor in the development of my playing technique, which to this day relies heavily on hammer-ons & the like. I have my own "sound" due to this. I like it--it's my bass guitar voice, literally. My right hand's become quite capable of doing what others here have called the "heavy lifting;" in a sense, my brain's been rewired to be musically ambidextrous. It works well for me. This may very well have been jump-started and then assisted by my background studying classical guitar as a young boy. My teacher taught me to use all of my fingers on both hands. And the exercises required equal strength & dexterity. She worked me hard. I owe her.

 

[pcake]

my husband is a lefty who plays both guitar and bass righty. his reasons - easier to find instruments and easier to learn watching others.

btw, i play some pretty intricate fingerstyle, which is imo more complex than anything i do with my fretting hand.

 

[navijaz]

I remember reading an article on that a while ago. Apparently studies have been done on that and the results were something along the lines of:

While it doesn't matter which hands we use because both fretting and plucking are equally complex tasks (which is why there is no discernible difference between left-handed and right-handed violinists although they play exactly the same instruments), the initial tendency in most people to pluck with the stronger hand comes from the fact that we tend to "hold" with the weaker and "do" with the stronger hand, no matter which requires more strength.